Mayhem - Liturgy of death

The beginnings: Euronymous, Necrobutcher and Manheim

The original core of Mayhem formed in Oslo in 1984; the group took its name from a track by the English band Venom (“Mayhem With Mercy”), and its members were guitarist Oystein Aarseth (whose alias at the time was “Destructor”), bassist Jorn Stubberud (“Necrobutcher”) and drummer Kjetil Manheim (known simply as “Manheim”).

The first two would form the “heart” of the band for years to come (with Necrobutcher the “survivor” still in the fold today), while the drummer would leave the band three years later, after the release of the “Deathcrush” EP; today he is a respected noise musician, and can even boast a collaboration (under the name “Big Robot”, from 2009) with Conrad Schnitzler of Tangerine Dream. But as we'll see further on, the German musician has even older ties to these Scandinavian metallers.

The trio (with Aarseth and Stubberud also handling vocals) recorded the demo “Pure Fucking Armageddon” in 1986, containing a handful of original tracks and a cover of Venom themselves (“Black Metal”), one of the main influences on their sound along with bands like Bathory and the Swiss act Hellhammer.

The sonic assault unleashed by the group, an utterly raw and primordial thrash metal, reaches us unfiltered by any professional recording, blowing well past the acceptable thresholds of lo-fi, to the point of barely being listenable; the result is a work with purely documentary value.

Meanwhile, Aarseth changed his stage name to “Euronymous” (a misspelling of the Greek term Eurynomos, “Prince of the Dead”) and the group set out to find a singer, approaching first Erik Norheim (“Messiah”) and then Sven Erik Kristiansen (“Maniac”); the former, in particular, would prove to be a true “shooting star” in the band's history, appearing only in a live setting, during a 1986 show in Ski. That live performance deserves a mention: a document of real value and, despite the amateur recording, considerably more intelligible than the demo. In all likelihood the only video evidence of Euronymous on stage, a dozen minutes in which the band plays only covers: besides the “Black Metal” from the demo, there's “Procreation Of The Wicked” by Celtic Frost and “Welcome To Hell”, again by Cronos and co.

Messiah's spot (he would later resurface on vocals for the hc/oi band Cockroach Clan) was subsequently taken by Sven Erik Kristiansen, better known as Maniac, a nickname often borne out live thanks to his self-destructive streak.

In August 1987 came the official debut, the EP Deathcrush (8 tracks, 18 minutes), released on Euronymous's own label, Posercorpse; in its own way, a “milestone” in metal history, even though it's a decidedly unorthodox work. Starting with the intro, “Silvester Anfang”, an experimental electronic piece by the aforementioned Conrad Schnitzler: the Norwegian guitarist, a huge fan of his, had literally camped outside the composer's house, and had managed to get close enough to him to ask for a track for the band's forthcoming debut. An instrumental sent on New Year's Eve, “Silvester” in German, hence the track's title. Barely two minutes of martial, disorienting percussion that soon gives way to the bare but killer riff of the title track: a fast death-thrash number indebted to Venom's “dirty” nwobhm and Bathory's primordial black metal, with Maniac's piercing screams — living up to his name — pushing Mayhem's sonic assault even further. A “maniacal” voice, also front and center on the slow “Chainsaw Gutsfuck” and the obsessive “Necrolust”, tracks where Euronymous's guitar becomes a veritable “chainsaw”.

On a couple of tracks, yet another Venom cover (“Witching Hour”), and the chaotic “Pure Fucking Armageddon” (preceded by the unsettling piano of “(Weird) Manheim”), Messiah's voice also makes a brief return.

Titles and lyrics for now remain close to the contemporaneous death metal vein, and thus focused on horror-movie, “shocking” themes, starting with the cover art depicting the macabre image of two severed hands in Mauritania; in general, the band's subject matter would almost never dwell on “pagan” or “Nordic” themes, unlike many other acts in the genre, preferring instead to focus on the darkest depths of the human psyche.

Dark depths in which Mayhem seem thoroughly sunk, finding themselves quite at home there in the early Nineties, when a series of unsettling interviews with the specialist press began to reveal to the world the story of the nascent Norwegian black metal scene and the so-called “Inner Circle”. But first the band had to face the loss of half its lineup.

In early 1988, Manheim and Maniac left the group; after being briefly replaced by Torben Grue and Kittil Kittilsen of Vomit, they were permanently replaced by Jan Axel Blomberg (“Hellhammer”), already of Mortem/Arcturus, and by the Swede Per Yngwe Ohlin, a “voice” who would leave an indelible mark on the history of Mayhem and of metal as a whole, under the nom de guerre of “Dead”. In the two previous years, Ohlin had been the frontman of Morbid, a death metal cult band (with only two demos to their name) that he himself had founded, which counted among its ranks two future members of Entombed (Lars Göran Petrov and Ulf Cederlund).

Although the group's sound is quite different from that of early Mayhem, the “morbid” aura permeating its compositions (with lyrics suspended between horror and a primordial satanism), together with the presence of the charismatic and versatile singer, makes it an important piece in the history of Scandinavian black metal.

In Nei Morbid Dead employs a vocal style influenced precisely by death-metal, though the aura of sinister darkness that would permeate the screaming vocals used later in Mayhem is already recognizable, reminiscent of early Bathory but at the same time charged with a personality all their own, unmistakable.

Dead "imports" into Mayhem the corpse paint, the strictly black-and-white "cadaverous" makeup already used by the Brazilians Sarcofago, another cult band, on the cover of their debut "I.N.R.I."; his extremely self-destructive attitude "marries" Euronymous's nihilism, but his arrival coincides with an extremely difficult period for the band: the financial hardship stemming from the uncompromising lifestyle imposed by the guitarist, as well as his extreme dedication to the "cause", bordering on no profit, make studio work arduous for the band, which repeatedly finds itself forced to change "home", to the point of having trouble getting food to sustain themselves.

Mayhem seem to find a bit of stability and the resources needed to record their first full-length only a couple of years later, as Euronymous himself recounts in an interview with the Norwegian magazine "Slayer": "We're working hard on the tracks for the next LP (…) this time the release won't be delayed any further, unless something extreme happens, like Hellhammer disappearing again, Dead cutting himself too much on stage, or me losing my passport in Albania…"

The band's leader has a genuine fascination with totalitarian regimes, and at that time he is living through a kind of inner conflict: "All the revolutions happening in Eastern Europe (these are the years of the fall of the Berlin Wall, ed.) could come straight out of the writings of Marx, Lenin and Mao, and the party I belong to fully supports them, because communism means total freedom (…) but on the other hand, on a personal level, I'm fascinated by nations like Albania, North Korea or Cambodia, which have adopted a very hard line and closed themselves off from the rest of the world (…)".

In any case, his political views must not find their way into the band's lyrics: "That will never happen. (…) I let the punks write about those topics in their lyrics. Nowadays tons of bands write "socially engaged" lyrics and have the nerve to call themselves death-metal. Bullshit! I play in a death-metal band, or you should probably call it black-metal, and the most important thing for me is Death! Bands that claim to play death-metal and aren't truly into death itself are "fake", and should go play punk instead. (…) Those people can just die, they've betrayed the scene. Death-metal is for brutal people capable of killing, not for idiot kids who want a fun hobby after school".

Truly sinister words, which will sound even more sinister once they take concrete form in the dramatic events about to strike the Norwegian group. Dead's own statements are also decidedly over the top, for instance when he talks about their live shows: "(…) We had pig heads impaled on stakes, and I cut myself on the arms with a strange knife and a broken Coca-Cola bottle. (…) Most of the people there were weaklings who didn't really want to watch our show! Before we started playing there was an audience of about 300 people but, after the second song "Necrolust", we started throwing pig heads. Only 50 stayed. I liked that! (…)".

The most famous testimony to these performances is Live In Leipzig, recorded in November 1990 (but released only in 1993), during a tour that had taken in Eastern Europe and Turkey. Once again a "non-professional" recording undercuts the potential of Mayhem's sound, but not to the point of compromising the final result and its effectiveness: the ferocity of the performances comes through intact, and this is without doubt one of the best documents of Dead's time in the Norwegian group, as well as an important chapter in his discography. Besides the Deathcrush tracks, new compositions destined for the debut full-length begin to appear.

Mayhem recorded only two studio tracks with Dead, in which the potential of this incarnation of the band emerges in all its devastating ferocity: "Freezing Moon" and "Carnage", which first appeared on the compilation "Projections Of A Stained Mind" (1991) and were reissued a few years later, in 1996, on a 12''. The collection "Out From The Dark" is also worth noting: seven tracks from a rehearsal session of more than decent quality (songs from "Deathcrush" and the future "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas").

This phase for Mayhem comes to a decidedly premature end, as does the life of the Swedish singer, who on April 8, 1991 killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head, after having cut his wrists and throat.

Just twenty-two years old, he leaves a note that ends with the emblematic phrase "Excuse all the blood" and the lyrics of the song "Life Eternal" as his ideal last testament; an extremely introverted personality, the accounts of those who knew him convey the image of a young man perpetually ill at ease with his own life, obsessed with the conviction that he wasn't truly "alive", an obsession perhaps rooted in a childhood trauma (a fractured sternum probably caused by an episode of bullying).

With his act, Per Yngwe Ollin joins the famous and numerous "young deaths" of rock'n'roll, ushering in the darkest phase in the history of the Norwegian band and of the local black-metal scene; meanwhile Aarseth has opened the record shop "Helvete", in Oslo, which immediately becomes the meeting place for local musicians, some of whom (the "Inner Circle") would later make headlines for church burnings and other criminal acts.

Euronymous once again finds himself having to look for a frontman, but first he has the (tasteless) idea of immortalizing his friend's corpse, "rearranging" the crime scene; a macabre image that will even end up on the cover of a bootleg, "The Dawn Of The Black Hearts" (a live recording made in Sarpsborg in 1990); an act which, together with the oppressive atmosphere surrounding the band, leads Necrobutcher to decide to leave it.

It is therefore a once again reshuffled lineup that enters the studio at Grieg Hall in Bergen at the end of 1992 to record Mayhem's long-awaited debut. After briefly recruiting vocalist Stian "Occultus" Johanssen, who leaves the band after just a few months (following a death threat from Euronymous himself), the role of singer for the recording of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is given to the Hungarian Attila Csihar, already a member of early black-metallers Tormentor and of the electro-industrial outfit Plasma Pool.

Far more troubled are the events surrounding the replacement of the bassist, events that would culminate in a tragic ending. Among the handful of records released by Euronymous's Deathlike Silence Productions were the works of a young Norwegian multi-instrumentalist, Kristian "Varg" Vikernes, alias Count Grishnackh, alias Burzum; the self-titled debut (from 1992) and the EP "Aske", from the following year, had brought to light the talent of the twenty-year-old Vikernes, through a formula influenced by early Bathory, built on lo-fi minimalism and inhuman screaming vocals.

The fraught relationship between the two, about which all sorts of things have been written over the years (rivalry of various kinds, financial problems, a mutual desire to eliminate the "rival" within the scene), would come to an end on August 10, 1993, when Vikernes goes to Euronymous's home (accompanied by Snorre Ruch, second guitarist on "De Mysteriis…") and kills him with a series of knife stabs. Mayhem's full-length debut is therefore released posthumously, following the deaths of both the founding guitarist and the longtime frontman, who was also the author of most of the album's lyrics.

The album opens in medias res with “Funeral Fog,” a galloping track where Euronymous's guitar immediately takes centre stage, marked as ever by tremolo riffing, over which looms the versatile, alien timbre of Attila Csihar, standing in for Dead's acid-etched howl. The tempo shifts, the unusual sonic clarity and the precision of Hellhammer's double bass drum set the overall tone of the track, a “piece of history” in Norwegian black metal, with an exquisitely 80s-thrash aftertaste (Germany's Sodom above all), closing exactly as it began: with a bang.

“Freezing Moon” is an utterly atmospheric piece even without keyboards: slow and anguished, yet it still makes room for savage double-pedal accelerations. The Hungarian's voice ranges between growls and searing wails as he sings love hymns to the blackest night, crowning a mounting tension that detonates, at the 4:23 mark, into a piercing solo, raw and essential, a prelude to yet another lyrical eruption from Csihar.

The fast-paced “Cursed In Eternity” shifts into fourth gear, once again driven by Hellhammer's lethal drumming: a true Norwegian black metal track with no compromises, built on savage stop-and-go dynamics, a prelude to an epic finale (“The demon flies in the blackened starless skyes…”) counterpointed by the esoteric, measured intro of the following “Pagan Fears,” with Mayhem conjuring dark, ancient rituals (“The past is alive”), and the picture painted by the fury of the five musicians almost seems to sketch the silhouettes of dark, hooded figures wandering over a fjord, men in black barely lit by the faint glow of the moon.

“A dream of another existence you wish to die a dream of another world you pray for death to release the soul”: “Life Eternal” too opens with a sinister riff that grips the listener, while Vikernes's bass rumbles ominously: an instrument often relegated to the background in black metal, here (and throughout the album as a whole) it is a thoroughly respectable protagonist, while Csihar's voice probes the most hidden recesses of the sonic spectrum.

Next comes a pair of highly aggressive tracks, “From The Dark Past” and “Buried By Time And The Dust,” marked by pronounced thrash-metal influences and the Hungarian's guttural delivery; razor-tight guitars, precise and blisteringly fast drumming, furious vocals: everything works to perfection in what is essentially the formula underpinning the whole album.

The closing duty falls to the title track: a voice rising from the depths (“WELCOME!”) beckons the listener toward dark worlds, and the track immediately takes flight, once again under the banner of Norwegian “black metal,” albeit rendered in countless shades, entrusted to Attila's voice and Euronymous's incredible guitar, delivering a “grand finale” of chilling, magnetic tones.

The New Mayhem

At Aarseth's funeral, Hellhammer and Necrobutcher decide not only to release De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (the drummer, contrary to what he had promised the guitarist's family, will not remove Vikernes's bass parts), but also to keep the band going; the Mayhem name resurfaces only at the end of 1995, however, with a lineup that is renewed yet hardly lacking in familiar faces: alongside Hellhammer and Necrobutcher, Maniac returns on vocals, while the guitarist's role goes to Rune “Blasphemer” Eriksen, of Aura Noir.

The first two studio recordings by the new lineup are the EP Wolf's Lair Abyss (1997) and the full-length Grand Declaration Of War (2000); between the two came an official live release (“Mediolanum Capta Est”), recorded this time in Italy, in the Lombard capital, again with Maniac but featuring a guest star appearance by Attila Csihar.

The EP is fairly faithful to the Mayhem sound, channelling the band's usual fury into a “polished” form: an electronic, martial, futuristic intro – in a sort of direct line from the first EP and its Silvester Anfang – gives way after two minutes to the uncompromising assault of “I Am Thy Labyrinth,” a track where Maniac's new style stands out, echoing the schizophrenia of “Deathcrush” but also the screaming vocals made famous by the many bands that followed in Mayhem's footsteps throughout the 90s. A “clean” vocal style also appears, a juxtaposition between voices first introduced by Attila Csihar on De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, an album whose dark aura resurfaces in this new work, especially in the slower passages, entrusted to new guitarist Blasphemer. The task of replacing Euronymous is obviously a tall order, but Eriksen skilfully blends a past steeped in thrash-metal leanings with a present rooted in Norwegian black metal; Hellhammer and Necrobutcher round out the work, crafting a rhythm section that is once again precise and killer.

Three years later, the album Grand Declaration Of War draws mixed reactions from critics and fans alike: it is, in fact, a work that incorporates several “progressive” elements into Mayhem's music, as well as hefty doses of electronics (“A Bloodsword And A Colder Sun,” “Completion In Science Of Agony”); Blasphemer, the “youngest” member of the band, is paradoxically the strongest link to the past, thanks to his guitar work, indebted to Euronymous's yet at the same time highly technical and distinctly his own.

“Grand Declaration Of War” is split into two parts, II and III: this is because the preceding EP constitutes the first part; the tracklist is indeed rather intricate, with the tracks themselves further broken down into multiple sections, as if to mirror the numerous shifts in style and tempo that set the tone for what is undoubtedly the Norwegian quartet's most experimental work.

The most “familiar” traits, besides the guitar parts, can be found in Hellhammer's drumming, once again a genuine human “steamroller,” whose drumming is far from simplistic, having matured over the years by absorbing influences from genres such as jazz and fusion.

Maniac once again ranges between screaming and clean vocals, a sort of spoken word delivery reciting the lyrics of a concept album centred on war and anti-Christian themes.

The same lineup would go on to release European Legions in 2001, a collection made up half of live recordings and half of demos for Grand Declaration Of War, which some consider superior – by virtue of their rawer, more “spontaneous” nature – to the finished versions that made it onto the album.

On the following Chimera, from 2004, Maniac further refines (or perhaps it would be better to say "sharpens") his vocal technique, delivering his best performance; it's a work more in line with black-metal "canon," but Sven Erik Kristiansen's voice still plays its role in a fierce and eclectic way, following in the footsteps of Csihar's performance on the band's first full-length. "De Mysteriis…" does indeed seem to be the main point of reference for this album too, which carries forward its ideas after the "experimental" detour of the previous record; Mayhem's "return" to black-metal coincides, without a doubt, with one of the best albums of the style released in the early 2000s.

The album's production, on the other hand, is a legacy of Grand Declaration Of War, marked by a very clean, cold sound that brings "Chimera" closer to a certain strand of ultra-technical death-metal; the album alternates faster-paced passages (like the opening "Whore" – once again a flat-out start) with slower, anguished ones ("Dark Night Of The Soul," "My Death"), all under a sound that is indeed free of the previous album's contaminations: an uncompromising work whose spontaneity shines through, alongside a great attention to detail.

The sense of coldness is heightened by the triggered sound of Hellhammer's drums, but the bass also benefits from the sonic cleanliness and is given moments in the spotlight, as in "Impious Devious Leper Lord"; guitarist Blasphemer co-writes (with Maniac) and produces the album.

However, the Norwegian singer's creative input and motivation are on the wane, and the situation that develops within the band after the release of Chimera leads him to quit once again (he will resurface a few years later with the doom-black metal project "Skitliv"); he is replaced by a returning Attila Csihar.

Ordo Ad Chao, released in 2007, confirms Mayhem's return to the black-metal formula tout court, while still accounting for the "evolutions" the band had pursued over the previous decade, and becomes their greatest commercial success ever (reaching number twelve on the Norwegian charts), also winning the "Best Metal Album" award at the Norwegian Spellemanpreisen.

Compared to Chimera, the record sounds dirtier, decidedly darker, partly thanks to a production that emphasizes its lower frequencies; it's undoubtedly "extreme" metal, but far from one-dimensional, ranging from the blackened-thrash of "Wall Of Water" and "Great Work Of Ages" to anguished, obsessive "suites" like "Illuminate Eliminate" (a track running a full nine minutes) and "Psychic Horns."

Blasphemer's contribution is once again essential, and this time he even goes above and beyond, handling the composition and recording of most of the bass parts; however, this is the last work that will see him playing in Mayhem's ranks: in April 2008 he issues a statement announcing his intention to leave the band (feeling he had by then said everything he had to say with this lineup) and to focus on other personal projects, including the Portuguese Ava Inferi. In subsequent interviews, the other members will hint at the impression that the constant friction with Euronymous, despite thirteen years in Mayhem, weighed on Blasphemer's decision.

Ordo Ad Chao is, in any case, an excellent parting gift from the talented guitarist: an album where everything works to perfection, in a kind of "ordered chaos" or "lucid madness," call it what you will, confirming the band's considerable artistic depth, as they once again craft a cohesive work built from familiar ingredients but with markedly original traits.

This latest defection will, in the years to come, see a string of session members rotate through the guitar role, up to the current lineup, which includes Norwegian Morten "Teloch" Iversen and – for live shows – also English guitarist Charles "Ghul" Hedger, formerly of Cradle Of Filth (live, Mayhem use two guitarists).

In summer 2013 the band announces they are in the studio recording their new LP; in April 2014 "Psywar" is released, the first single previewing the imminent Esoteric Warfare, their fifth album, out in June. Ghul joins the band permanently as guitarist alongside Teloch. This time the lyrics focus less on satanic themes and more on conspiracy theories, mind control, and alien manipulation of human evolution. While it doesn't add anything to the legend, the Norwegians' latest effort balances their boldest, most experimental impulses with an unbroken belligerent spirit: thirty years after their founding, and more than twenty years after the deaths of Euronymous and Dead, Mayhem's dark spirit is still very much alive.

In 2016 the band brings the full version of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas back to the stage. On the long tour that follows, Mayhem confirm they are in fine form, with an especially inspired Attila fully embodying the role. The same year sees the release of a live album and DVD, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Alive, which immortalizes the Norwegians' brutal performance, by now a settled lineup.

In 2018 a film about the history of Mayhem and the Norwegian scene of the Nineties is also made, titled "Lords of Chaos" and directed by Jonas Åkerlund (an early member of Bathory). The film is loosely based on the book of the same name by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind, an investigative account of the dark criminal events that plagued the scene. Åkerlund receives considerable criticism from genre fans. His work is accused of not being very faithful to reality.

On October 25, 2019, Daemon is released, Mayhem's sixth album. The band returns with their best record since De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. The new album, however, is not a work that looks only to the past, even though it is in a sense a return to their origins. Mayhem have managed to update and evolve their sound without ever renouncing their passion for the extreme. Daemon is the product of a band in perfect sync, still capable of annihilating the listener. The record is a kind of sonic portrait of hell from a demon's point of view. Beyond the legend and the myth, Mayhem reclaim their throne at a moment when the genre seems to be enjoying a forceful resurgence, and they do so with one of the best releases of the year.

Contributions by Marco De Baptistis ("Esoteric Warfare," "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Alive," and "Daemon")

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